


Arithmetics

by HobbsTunaSammi



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Tag list expanding as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8590732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HobbsTunaSammi/pseuds/HobbsTunaSammi
Summary: They ride hard north-by-northwest with the taste of ash on the wind behind them. 
Goes AU after/during Episode 69
Unbetaed





	1. Chapter 1

They ride hard north-by-northwest with the taste of ash on the wind behind them. They keep to the woods, using whatever cover the foliage will provide. It’s easier these days. Outside of the fortress cities, wilderness is reclaiming fallow fields and abandoned villages, the wind whispering in empty windows and dancing over soot stained walls.  
  
Autumn is lurking through the door that summer has left open like a sneaky thief; dry brown leaves like mummified fingers are scratching over weed choked cobble stones and empty door sills. Vex keeps her eyes to the sky for the quick moving black shapes that promise death and ruin.  
  
Shapes in dark green cloaks move around her in a practiced dance, clinging to shadows and fading in and out of sun dappled greenery when the warning call reaches them. It’s the hunting cry of the snow buzzard; nesting in their hundreds in the redwood forests of the Alabaster Sierras, but unknown this far south.  
  
The vanguard has spied danger up the overgrown road. A few short hand signals and Torben, the youngest of her scouts, leads the horses deeper into the forest while the rest of her Sept is fading into the underbrush. Vex springs upwards from the heavy, emerald moss pillows and grasps the low hanging branches of an old oak, pulling into the amber foliage, clambering upwards into the treetop.  
  
Finally she finds a stable perch in a crutch and nooks an arrow. Breathless silence takes the woodland road, as they wait, hands slick with sweet on bow strings and sword grips. Waiting has never come easy for her, although some people can go in themselves, wait with cold eyed calm, polished glasses like ice floes. A tranquil winter lake full of dark undercurrents.  
  
She never had that skill for all that the confused, bload-soaked heat of the sword dance holds few horrors for her anymore.  
  
When all your worst nightmares have already come to take roost in your house, like a murder of crows on the gallows, there is simply not much left to fear.  
  
She listens to the rushing of blood in her ears, controls her breathing, counts heart beats. The songbird and woodland creatures take up their business again around them as the minutes drag by.  
  
Finally there is faint screeching sound, growing louder; soon to be joined by the creaking of leather armor, the murmur of many hoarse voices, as the war band comes around a bend in the forest road.  
  
Vex counts two efreeti and 29 lizardmen with spears and glaives raised, five of which are mounted on muscle-packed war saurians with toe-claws like short swords. Thordak’s crimson adorns their leather cuirasses, crimson on the tip of their spears, crimson turning to rust-brown smeared on the faces of their slaves. The shadow of the cinder king lies heavy over this land.  
  
Four men with empty eyes and heavy iron collars are pulling a card, another seven women and children cowering in the back.  
  
“Screeeetch.”, screams the badly oiled axel. “Screeeetch, Screeeetch, Screeeetch.”  
  
The music of the damned.  
  
She remembers.  
  
She is not entirely sure about the exact point in time for all that the memory is clear and sharp edged, like a razor blade, in her heart.  
  
It must have been after the Glintshore left her heart raw and desperate, but before the Great Burning, before fire and death descended onto the land.  
  
He is sitting in one of the armchairs of the old library, when she finds him, thick afternoon amber light spilling like liquid honey over darkly polished wood and the intricately embroidered silk of his west. His face is in shadow, although she doesn’t need to see it for she knows it better than her brother’s by now, could carve it blindly into pale marble.  
  
The finely crafted facial features, high check-bones and pale-pink cupid lips. The face of a fallen angle, the shade of a demon.  
  
Her fingers gently brush over the thick leather-bound ledgers on the table in front of him.  
  
“What are you reading, darling?”  
  
“Account books. Truly scintillating literature.”  
  
Her eyes follow his hands, long pianist fingers handling a small book with the carefully controlled respect, he usually reserves for large amounts of black powder. Sometimes, often, she can’t tell where the man begins and where his many sliding masks end, but today she can feel the vibrating tension in his frame, like the cocked hammer of his gun.  
  
Gently she pulls the small tome from his hands, eyeing the gold-imprinted letters on the spine.  
  
“Mathematical Deliberations on Duty. Doesn’t look like an account book.”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
“Horoscope? Cookie receipt?” She gives him her very best flirty smile, hoping to make him blush. His gaze slides of her, seeking something in the distance.  
  
“The Ethics of Utilitarianism.”  
  
“Some light afternoon reading then.”  
  
Percy smiles wanly.  
  
“You must understand I was never expected to rule anything. My Lord Father already had an heir and a spare, I would join Julius’ rule as a vassal or else the clergy or a make my own way in the world. I understand that mercenary companies are the traditional approach.”  
  
He breathes a short little laugh at the irony and pauses to nervously rub his hand over the pockets in his vest.  
  
“Archie still saw to it, that we were educated to serve our people. He was a stern teacher, a strict Khartonian, so …”  
  
“… Khartonian?”  
  
“Vetonian philosopher belonging to Horokian-School. Big proponents off duty, self-discipline and the contract between people and sovereign.”  
  
He nervously turns the small volume over and over in his hand.  
  
“You see, since the dawn of time the Nobility, or anyone in charge, really, has come up with all kinds of justifications for holding on to power, from investment of divine rights by the Gods to greater good. Usually it comes down to I-pay-all-the-men-with-swords-so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it.”  
  
“Khartonians …, well it’s another self-justification system. They hold that the Sovereign is invested with the power of sword and purse as long as he is living embodiment of his people, the avatar of their needs. Everything is subservient to the needs of your people.”  
  
My wants, my needs, my friends, you. He doesn’t say.  
  
“Oh right, that. Yeah I totally knew that, … or I would have if I hadn’t been so busy smuggling a stink toad in our tutor’s satchel. Self-defense really, she was trying to kill us with boring.”  
  
Her rather feeble attempt to lighten the mood falls flat on its face, when Percy simply pushes past it.  
  
“Morality is paired down to an exercise in arithmetic and probability estimates. This is right for 0.75 fewer people die; this is wrong for it does not sufficiently maximize the well-being integrated over all you citizens. I’m not sure if it’s good sign that I should find that so very comforting. I never did well with metaphysics.”  
  
“Taking your duties to your people seriously does not make you a bad man, Percy.”  
  
“Doesn’t it? Do you think Anna believed in a higher purpose? For herself? This world? Do you think she was loyal to anything?”  
  
“No? If she had loyalty to anything but her own depravity and hunger for power, I didn’t see the slightest hint of it. She had no friends, no family only tools. Where is this even coming, Percy?”  
  
She should not be surprised that Percy’s ghosts carry a familiar faces, but the sheer affront of the implied equivalency leaves her breathless, hot and itchy under her skin with outrage that he would even entertain the thought.  
  
Her heart hammers against her rib-cage like a jackrabbit, her tongue suddenly slow and clumsy in her mouth, flopping about like a dead fish. Finally she forces words out through the tightness in her throat.  
  
“This is some ridiculous horse-shit my dear and we simply can’t afford your self-pity, right now. Whitestone can’t afford it.”  
  
“I know you did not ask for this shit job, but no one asks for theirs. I bet you don’t even get a day off on Winter’s crest. You are not alone. Your friends are with you. We will never abandon you. We will help you.” _I will. If you will ask me. I’ll be worthy. I’ll protect this house, this people, no matter the price. I will. I will. I will. I swear. ___  
  
She had meant it, too.  
  
She had been so young, so stupid.  
  
Stupid, greedy girl.  
  
She had thought the Blind Man, Him-of-the-falling-dice would let her keep all the things she wanted.  
  
Her brother.  
  
Her friends.  
  
Her bear.  
  
The man she loved.  
  
Vex thinks about all the ways you can lose somebody you love; the ways she had feared and the ways she had not but should have.  
  
She thinks of necessary evils and battles you can win and closing the shield wall and stepping over your own dead and war horns calling for an ordered retreat, with the stench of blood and fear heavy on the sulfuric air.  
  
She turns her face away from the children in the card; listens to the tortured screaming of the wagon axel, slowly fading into the distance, for a thousand heart beats, after the war band has disappeared around a bend in the road.  
  
She orders her Sept forward. Its two days ride to the outer bulwarks and they have miles to go before they sleep.

  



	2. Chapter 2

Fifteen miles outside of the walls of Fort Turst the Bone Road begins. The first of the bleached lizardmen skulls, awaiting them, has fallen into the undergrowth, the wooden spike, it was jammed on, rotted through, but no further than a hundred paces down the road, a broken spear shaft holds the next silent warning.  
  
Over the next half mile the grisly way markers multiply until they line the street like fence posts, a parade of mummified faces and empty eye sockets.  
  
These are the lands under the protection of the Iron Council and all disciples of the Cinder King will know the price for trespassing. Vex turns her face away in distaste, but there is no escaping the smell and the buzzing flies.  
  
Her men are tense as coiled whips, raid and counterraid have left the land outside the border fortresses an ash-covered desert, bereft of all cover, and the next raiding party is never far.  
  
Many a man thought himself save and meet his end within eyeshot of friendly walls.  
  
The last mile before the border crossing is ash covered scrubland, the garrison using controlled blazes to cut back the plant cover. Nothing higher than a man’s knee is permitted in the killing fields.  
  
What once was a sleepy farm town, now holds the southernmost border stronghold of the Iron Council, protecting the bread basket of last civilized power on the continent.  
  
Five enormous, squat drum towers loom five stories into the fiery evening sky, dark silhouettes against the pink and indigo of the sunset. Four of them have stone cupolas spiked with enormous iron lances and upward pointing mortars protecting from aerial attacks. The central bastion, protected by the cross-fire from the gun ports of its brethren, is the only fortress building with a flat top, holding a, currently occupied, sky ship dock.  
  
Matthis pulls his horse alongside hers.  
  
“Not on schedule. The Firewings is not due till the day after tomorrow.”  
  
Vex shakes her head. “Not the Firewings. Too large. It’s one of the new Ironclads.”  
  
Matthis spits a stream of chewing tobacco blackened spittle into the scrub. “You got the eyes to make that call, I suppose. Trouble.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
The veteran scout’s weather-beaten face scrunches and he shrugs. “I dunno. But I can feel it in me water. Trouble, I say.”  
  
She has learnt to trust the instincts of the leathery old man blindly but Vex, by now, also knows to pick her battles.  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind, Matthis. Let’s go home.”  
  
They urge their horses forward towards the watch fires and home.  
  
The lookouts with their spy glasses and scrying stones have seen them coming for miles and miles, so an escort is coming to meet them half a mile outside the bridge gates over the Whitewater Rush. Six hulking iron clock-work golems with their enormous blunderbusses are bringing up the center, a dozen musketeers in the colors of the royal guard shoring up the flanks, the fading sun light glinting off broadswords and muskets. A familiar face with the markings of a sergeant is leading the party.  
  
“Trish? Is that you?”  
  
The grizzled old Whitestone veteran keeps her pistol trained on the approaching scouts.  
  
“Pass phrase?”  
  
“The cube has a diameter.”  
  
The musketeers visibly relax but keep a watchful eye on her party while the regimental bone caster checks them for geases or outsider influence.  
  
When the all clear sign is given the iron golems step forward to include her patrol into their circle of iron cleavers and hand cannons, their sapphire optics restlessly scanning the darkening woods and the sky for threats.  
  
Vex urges her horse next to Trish’s mount.  
  
“Welcome home, Lady Vex’ahlia.”  
  
Vex gives the old soldier a tight smile.  
  
“Sergeant. What brings the royal musketeers to the border fortresses? Did something happen?”  
  
Ropey strands of muscles shift beneath the dull grey steel cuirass as Trish shrugs.  
  
“Don’t know. More incursions into the fortress belt. Again. We had 200 wyvern raiders attack Forge, not five days past. Nothing really out of the ordinary, though. The Chancellor just ordered us into the regimental rotation. Captain Leore was royally pissed.”  
  
Vex fights hard to keep her poker face. If the Chancellor managed to pry Kynan away from Cassandra, the situation is either just the wrong side of disastrous or there are things afoot in the political landscape of the Capital.  
  
“Did the order come from the Chancellor in person or was it delivered through his office?”  
  
Trish gives her a deeply uncomfortable look as the great iron gates of the fortress swing open in front of them, disappearing into a gas lamp illuminated tunnel.  
  
“I couldn’t say my lady. You would have to ask the captain.”  
  
There are things you can’t ask of a soldier, particularly one as fiercely loyal as Trisha. Vex hands her horse over to the stable boys. There was a time when leaving the care of any of her beasts to a near stranger would have been unthinkable but she has learnt not to become attached to animal and people alike.  
  
She leaves the care of her men to her second and the quartermaster, waves goodbye to Trish and goes to report to the Garrison commander.  
  
The war room is buried deep in the bowels of the inner keep, flickering gas lamp light reflecting of polished granite columns surrounding the central scrying sphere. Darkly polished blackwood tables are piled high with maps and documents.  
  
Kynan is bent over the brass and wood control boards of the difference engine, the polished brass and redwood rings, sliding smoothly into each other, whirling around the black singularity in its center.  
  
He looks up when she enters the room quiet as a ghost. It strikes her again how much Kynan has changed over the last fifteen years. The melodramatic boy with stars in his eyes is long gone, slain by a young man with blood on his hands, bending like a willow under the load of his guilt, replaced by a soldier that has learnt the price of necessity, haunted by his own legion of unquiet ghosts.  
  
Fifteen years ago she couldn’t look at him without wanting to dig a knife into this gut, these days, other than Pike, he is the closest thing she has to a friend in the capital.  
  
“Captain. I was under impression you would crumble into dust, if you moved out of earshot from Cassandra. What brings you to this miserable pit?”  
With a detached sense of amusement she registers the dark look that Kynan shots her. There was a time when he wouldn’t have been able to meet her eye to save his life.  
  
“Orders from the warmaster.”  
  
Vex raises her eyebrows.  
  
“Cassandra let her do that?”  
  
“She didn’t have a choice. The council voted and that they voted how the Chancellor told them to vote. He made sure of that.”  
  
Something cold and winding is crawling up her spine.  
  
“What interest does Lord de Rolo have in sending his sister’s protector away?”  
  
“He is replacing people in key positions with his creatures. The whisperers report to Shorthalt and Keshaw has the garrison now. I don’t think there is an Officer left in the capital, who isn’t personally loyal to him, above all else.”  
  
“What are you implying, Kynan?”  
  
His smile is grim and entirely without humour.  
  
“Nothing. This room is not warded. Let’s talk later.”  
  
There are steps and voices in the corridor, the Garrison commander and his body guard detail have arrived.  
  
Vex straightens and composes herself. One battle at a time.  
  
***  
  
She finds what she seeks, in a sparsely lit chapel in the vaults, driven five levels deep beneath the earth. Seven shrines are arranged like a prayer wheel along the walls of the circular room.  
  
Being a garrison, Kord’s altar is generously supplied with offerings. Strength to my sword arm, steel to my heard, she knows these prayers well. She watches a young soldier throwing a sacrificial paper into the fire bowl, so that the smoke will carry his words to his patron and turns her face away. She has marched all her life in the shadow of the Lord of Battle, knows well his capricious favor and wanton cruelty. She has nothing to say to him.  
  
Moradin is the next most honored with a sea of candles lighting his altar. Protect, form and heal. Extend your mighty shield arm on behalf of my son, my brother, my lover; keep them save, keep them warm, heal their ailments.  
  
Vex has no time for the Patron of Mothers and Craftsman. She knows the god’s promises to be sweet poison, has drunk too deep from the well of darkness that lies in the hearts of men. All the hate and secrets he, they, kept hard and silent in their hearts, a black smoke thorn bush bearing ghastly fruit.  
  
If you are truly unlucky your loved ones will live long enough to become the villain.  
  
Bahamut or Erathis, Ioun or Melora, Ravenqueen or Sarenrae, she has no use for their false promises and sugar-coated lies.  
  
She kneels before the altar in the hub of the prayer wheel, lights a fire in the cold sacrificial bowl, throws a ball of incense into the flames.  
  
Whatever else you can say about him, the Lord of Masks makes no false promises, offers no mercy but the inevitability of his falling dice.  
  
Long into the night she communes with the spinner of fate, listens to the dark, savage laughter reverberating in the empty halls of dead and uncaring gods.  
  
The sound of rolling dice follows her long into her dreams.

  



End file.
